Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

A village surrounded by mud.

Countless villagers were trapped in the perilous highlands.

The pouring rain was like a waterfall. Mud was rolling and roaring like animals, savaging their homes. Everybody was shivering in the storm, waiting for the storm to die down or for the highland where they were at to be swallowed by the flood and mud.

However, there was one young man among the villagers whose performance was extraordinary.

His eyes were blurred, and his face was dazed, as if he were dwelling in his memories. Then, he extended his hands to the sky, as if he had received a certain message from the dense clouds, or as if he were releasing all the information about his life.

“Hey, Ah Hao, what’s going on? Are you scared silly?”

His friends pushed him hard.

“I—I have a headache. I don’t know why, but I thought of a novel that I read a few days ago.”

The young man named Ah Hao was in pain and confusion. He held his head and mumbled, “Something is popping up inside my head. How weird. What—what is—”

BOOM!

Right then, deafening noises were echoing inside the village. It turned out that the flood and the mudslide were too fierce and had demolished the tallest and most solid building in the village. Countless building materials and vehicles were rolling and struggling in the mud, passing by their feet.

The water level rose again.

A small tree on the shore was swallowed by the mud in the blink of an eye.

Some of them were screaming, some were crying, and some were hoping to be rescued. But there were too many affected areas for the rescue team to arrive.

The young man named ‘Ah Hao’ suddenly blocked several women and children in front of the flooding flood and mud.

“Ah Hao, what are you doing?”

His friends were all dumbfounded.

“I—I don’t know.”

Ah Hao’s eyes seemed to have turned into a universe of billions of stars. His hesitation gradually turned into determination. He said, one word after another, “I just—I suddenly had a feeling that I could defeat floods and mudslides!

…

At the same time, thousands of kilometers away, in a city that had been completely demolished by the earthquake, billions of tons of rebar, concrete, and construction waste had been turned into ruins. Countless people had been pressed into the cold, dark, enclosed space, living a miserable life.

A middle-aged man in camouflage uniform was kneeling in front of the ruins of a skyscraper and digging desperately.

His tears had run dry a long time ago, and his fingernails had been worn out. There was not the slightest hint of emotion on his face. He was like a machine driven by ‘habit’.

However, no matter how hard he tried, even though he had heard the feeble screams from below, the strength of human beings was limited after all. It was impossible for him to carry away thousands of tons of garbage in the debris barehanded.

“Ah! Ah! Ah!”

Blood was flowing out of the man’s throat. The muscles on his arms were like ropes that had been tightened to the point that they were about to break, but his futile attempts were futile. He wasted half an hour and tried all the tools at his disposal, but he could not even move the heaviest floor half an inch. In the end, he fell to the ground and cried miserably.

But right then, as if he had received a certain signal, a humming noise echoed inside his brain. Dazzling stars, the deep universe, and the pride and glory of countless people appeared in his head!

The man’s eyes suddenly lit up.

Taking a deep breath, the man spat on his palm and inserted his bare hands into the gap between the rebar and the concrete. He roared and exerted all his strength.

For a moment, his muscles bulged, and his veins bulged, as if ten dragons and ten elephants were popping up below his skin.

CRACK! CRACK!

The rebars were bent, and the stones were flying everywhere. In the screams of countless people nearby, hundreds of tons of garbage was lifted up by the man!

…

It was not just the young man who was faced with the mudslide, nor was it just the man who had raised the ceiling. It was not just limited to East Asia, but also all over the world. The ‘hot blood’ and ‘souls’ of countless heroic spirits had been awakened by the information from the battlefields of the great universe. Thousands of ‘soul fragments’ that had been sealed for a long time emerged from the depths of their brains and soared into the sky, darting toward the depths of the Square Boat Island at a lightning fast speed.

In the command center deep inside the Ark Island, the will of the earth could clearly sense that thousands of pieces of ‘Li Yao’s soul’ were flooding close and bombarding it. Even the humming sound turned into Li Yao’s roars and echoed around it.

“What are you doing?”

The will of the planet felt that it was losing control over ‘College Student Li Yao’s’ body more and more.

“Of course, we are going to do what we are best at—reverse possession!”

The mental devil sneered. “In the battlefield of possession, we have never been scared of anybody, any existence, or anything that calls itself a god or a creator!

“That’s impossible.”

The will of the earth gnashed its teeth. “You will never succeed!”

“If that’s the case, what are you scared of? Just let us march forward and destroy ourselves!”

The mental devil laughed. “Or, I can drag you down with me!”

“Childish. What appeared in front of you was just a projection, a clone, and 1% of my strength.”

The will of the earth sniffed. “Even if the projection is destroyed and the clone is taken over by you, so what if 1% of your strength is gone?”

“It’s true that you are just a projection and a clone of the real will of the earth. But the projection and the clone are an entrance that allows us to invade and analyze the real will of the earth!

The mental devil shouted, “As long as we swallow your projection and analyze your structure, we will be able to sneak into the body of the real will of the earth and figure out what the so-called ‘super body civilization’ is exactly!

“We are bacteria, we are viruses, and we are cancer cells that are not under any control. It is our style to fail and to fail. Even if we cannot defeat you, we can crawl into your internal organs and mess you up. We will create a great opportunity for the resistance on the battlefield of the universe to launch a fatal attack. If you are not scared at all, just wait and see!”

“You…”

The voice of the will of the earth lowered down. “Why did you do that? You are not the real Li Yao at all. Isn’t it a great opportunity for the ‘Bloody Demon Personality’ and the ‘Li Yao Personality’ to be completely divided? Why did you have to meld with him and let yourself be controlled by him again?”

“Don’t give me that. Who says I’m not the real Li Yao? I’m the real Li Yao. I’m the real Li Yao. I’m smart, I’m deep, I’m determined, I’m far-sighted, and I’m flawless. It’s just that I’m too lazy to show off. That’s why I gave the opportunity to the hot-blooded high school student!”

The mental devil sneered. “There’s no need to drive a wedge between us. I will never stand on your side. Even for my predecessor, the Blood Stripe Virus, it was a mysterious existence that fed on emotions. The more intense the emotions were, the more satisfied I was.

“But in your ‘super-body civilization’, everyone’s soul is connected to each other and even melded into an indistinguishable ‘super consciousness’. Individuals have no meaning to exist at all, and it’s even more impossible to have the slightest bit of intense emotions. Everyone is the same. You are me. I am you. You have me in you. I have you in me. How can emotions flow between countless identical individuals?

“That’s why I made a bold assumption. You can simulate or even create everything, but you don’t have the emotions of a normal person at all. Asking me to submit to an ancient, unchanging existence like you is simply a living hell!

“As for Li Yao… Alright, let’s call this hot-blooded high school student as such for now. Although his shortcomings are as overwhelming as a flood and too numerous to count to count to the point of making one’s hair stand on end, in the end, he is still a living person with flesh and blood. He possesses all the advantages, disadvantages, and emotional fluctuations of a human being. I would rather stand in his shoes and use his eyes, hands, and soul to explore and perceive the entire universe!”

Accompanied by the roars of the mental devil, glamorous colors exploded inside the brain of ‘College Student Li Yao’ like fireworks.

“No. It’s impossible!”

The control that the will of the earth had over the body became more and more chaotic and feeble. Silver sweat was leaking out of its pores, as if its strength had been banished by the body.

“Nothing is impossible. As Red Pole said just now, the most precious quality of human beings is ‘change’. People can change. Maybe you are absolutely confident that you can control Li Yao when he leaves Earth, but you will never know what we experienced in the Pangu Universe, how much we have changed, what kind of formidable existences we have become, and what we are fighting for!

The mental devil burst into laughter. It stopped paying attention to the will of the earth and roared hysterically toward the depths of the brain of the ‘college student’, Li Yao, “The sun is already out, and you are still sleeping? ‘Li Yao’s personality’, get up now and take back our bodies!”

“When we were crossing the Bifrost, didn’t you promise yourself that you would not be completely controlled by the enemy, and that you would be able to come back to yourself with your strong will and firm belief even if you were controlled by the enemy for a while? I believed you and watched you act as the bait. Now, it’s time for you to fulfil your promise, ‘Li Yao’s personality’!

“I believe in you. The six billion martyred souls believe in you. The countless resistors on the battlefield of the universe believe in you, too. All the soul fragments of ‘Li Yao’ have been gathered. Now is the time. Condense, awaken, and return. Let out the roars that will shake the universe again, the legendary Vulture Li Yao!”